The Gun Lobby Protects Illegal Gun Dealers

By Cernig

Head on over to The Agonist, where there's an article by New York State Senator Eric Schneiderman which charges that Republican-backed legislation is undermining civil and criminal justice efforts against illegal guns.

Here's a snippet:

In the wake of this week’s tragic shooting rampage at Virginia Tech, we are witnessing a lot of hand-wringing by politicians who acknowledge that the flooding of America with easily available handguns is a problem, but contend that the overwhelming power of the gun lobby prevents us from doing anything about it. In fact, there’s a great deal we can do. For one thing, we can unshackle our law enforcement officers and lawyers by allowing them to use data on "crime guns” to stop the small minority of gun dealers that supply America’s criminals with their weapons.

...At the behest of the gun lobby, Congress attached riders to the last three appropriation bills for the ATF—the Tiarht Amendments —barring the ATF from sharing crime gun trace data with municipalities or local law enforcement, except for data relating to a specific crime. Yes, our “tough on crime” Republican Congress decided it would be a good idea to make it impossible for local police departments and city governments to analyze where the criminals in their communities are getting illegal guns. This provision makes it impossible for cities that bear the brunt of the illegal gun problem to either target their law enforcement resources effectively against illegal guns within their jurisdiction, or to identify the gun dealers outside their jurisdiction who are supplying illegal guns to their communities and seek to have their reckless behavior enjoined by the courts.

Schneiderman says that past analysis by the ATF has shown that approximately 1 percent of guns dealers sell approximately 57 percent of the guns that are used in crimes - for an individual shop that is supplying the illegal market that means having hundreds of “crime guns” traced back to them per year as oppossed to one or two for a law-abiding one - but that the gun manufacturers are intent on keeping the profits they make from these illegal sales which amount to 15% of all gun sales.

Meanwhile, everyone else pays the cost. Gun violence costs the US $100 billion a year, writes Schneiderman, primarily from healthcare and lost productivity costs. He urges that "to realize the promise of the civil justice system when it comes to reining in illegal guns, we must lobby Congress to strip the Tiahrt amendment from this year’s ATF appropriation...tell Congress to protect police instead of criminals."

Such actions should only be the beginning, in my opinion. US homicides involving guns are, per capita, 55 times higher than UK rates. The only way to end gun violence is to end easy access to guns - in particular handguns - and to end the culture that glorifies gun macho as being somehow as American as apple pie.